An attempt to get automated voices on Toronto’s city buses to sound less American is causing passenger complaints that the new pronunciation turns the word “avenue” into a strange robotic stew.Frequent riders on Toronto Transit Commission buses were complaining on social media this week of the change, made Sunday, to the announcements of upcoming bus stops.YouTube user Pollard Kowsill uploaded a video Tuesday capturing the odd announcement as a TTC bus on Lawrence Avenue West approaches a stop at Marlee Avenue.“Next stop, Marlee a-VEEN-oo,” the mechanical voice intones.On Twitter, several users flagged the change, variously calling it a glitch, a fail or just an amusing aside.Twitter user Max Power asked: “Why can’t the voice on #TTC busses pronounce ‘avenue’ properly, you would think that would be one of the things you would check.”Prabhjot Bhatia said the word sounds like “uh-veee-new,” Tina McCulloch transcribed it as “Ah-VEE-new” while another said it was “basically jibberish.”Transit watchdog Alex R., called it an “announcer mishap” on Twitter.@TTChelps TTC buses’ in-bus announcement has started pronouncing “Avenue” as “uh-veee-new” instead of the regular pronunciation.— Prabhjot Bhatia (@TheBhatias) June 25, 2019Another rider said it was embarrassing and hilarious at the same time: “I required epic levels of self-control to not laugh so loud every stop.”TTC social media accounts have been informing complainants that the computer programming would be changed back in next month’s update.“We changed it to reflect a ‘Canadian’ pronunciation as per some complaints we received that it sounded American. However, due to the current complaints we will be reverting to what it was before for the August board period,” the TTC’s official Twitter account said.We changed it to reflect a “Canadian” pronunciation as per some complaints we received that it sounded American. However, due to the current complaints we will be reverting to what it was before for the August board period ^DM— TTC Customer Service (@TTChelps) June 24, 2019The failed pronunciation stems from the TTC’s best intentions, Stuart Green, TTC spokesman, told the National Post.It stems from the TTC’s new Vision service delivery system that coordinates communications and GPS, and is how bus destination signs and automated announcements are controlled.When the system started, there were customer complaints that the machine-reading of “avenue” sounded ”too American,” said Green.“It sounded to some like ‘avenOO,’” he said. “As we know, Canadians are very protective of the nuances of our accent, eh? So the powers that be attempted a solution through Vision’s text-to-speech system to re-Canadianize the pronunciation to something resembling ‘avenEW.’In the engineer’s test environment, it sounded like they nailed it.“Once the electronic files were pushed out to the vehicles, the on-board system interpreted the text files differently and ‘a-VEEN-oo’ was born,” said Green. “Our working theory is that the test environment employed a different text-to-speech engine than those on the buses.”It is most striking when “avenue” is the last word in the sentence. When the word is followed by a modifier, such as “west,” “east” or “express service,” it is less noticeable, he said.Nonetheless, it’s back to the drawing board for TTC engineers.“At the risk of losing other, far more important, pronunciations if we were to change the bus voice, we will be reverting to the previous pronunciation on Aug. 4,” Green said.Because, despite much of the social media mirth, the audible stop information is crucial to some passengers. If the text-to-speech refinements can be mastered, the TTC will try again to make the city’s buses sound like they were raised on this side of the border.Meanwhile, the complaints over the avenue stumble led Twitter user Steve Munro to note that automated announcement on TTC vehicles already mispronounce several of the city’s street names.And Brian Lanigan quipped: “Every TTC announcement sounds like someone’s mom who can’t beatbox.” • Email: ahumphreys@nationalpost.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys